Kazim Bozdemir, Bülent Ulusoy, Hayati Kale, Mehmet Hakan Korkmaz

The role of inflammation markers in predicting the prognosis of Bell's palsy

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR)and the platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and Bell’s palsy in addition to the usability of these markers topredict prognosis.Methods: In this prospective study, the patient group included 24 patients that were diagnosed with Bell’spalsy and 29 healthy volunteers that had similar characteristics to them regarding age and gender with patientgroup as the control group. The temporal gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (TGd-MRI) wasperformed to all patients. The complete blood count was also obtained from both the patient and the controlgroups, and these two groups were compared for NLR and PLR, mean platelet volume (MPV), plateletdistribution width (PDW), and platelet count. The relationship between these markers and Bell’s paralysisprognosis was also investigated.Results: The patient and control groups were similar in age and gender (p > 0.05). NLR was significantlyhigher in the patient group compared with the control group (p = 0.016). There was no correlation between theNLR value and the prognosis of Bell’s Palsy. The PDW and white blood cell count (WBC) were significantlyhigher in the patient group than the control group (p = 0.023 and p = 0.012, respectively). A comparison of therecovered and unrecovered patients revealed that the PDW value was significantly higher and the platelet countwas lower in the recovered patients than the unrecovered patients (p = 0.009 and p = 0.003 respectively). TheMPV value was higher in the recovered patients, though not statistically significant (p = 0.063). Based on thecut-off values determined in the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, a comparison of therecovered and unrecovered patients reveals that the likelihood of not healing was significantly higher in thosethat had normal PDW values (p = 0.036).Conclusion: These results might support the theory of inflammation in patients with Bell’s palsy.

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